The Free-trade Alliance
The Free-trade Alliance (FTA) is an alliance between lot's of indepentantly ruled systems found in the galaxy, in home-made sci-fi setting. Original government and structure The systems and independant planets in this alliance are self governed, almost. They do share common grounds on a set of rules, and occationally intervene on particular systems inside the alliance that needs to be set straight. They have a council in which all members are represented by a senator. They want nothing of the Galactic Alliance nor the Sith, and have been forced into making this trade alliance, because they would otherwise not have any favourable trading parters. While a relatively large faction, they have no ruling body and can rarely agree on any one thing, as every "nation" within it, has it's own rulers, costums and cultures. They have more systems than the Sith Empire, but are much smaller than the Galactic Alliance. Standing with other factions They have a good standing with the Sith Empire at the moment (trade wise), but are discontent with the Galactic Alliance at most. However, they respect the Galactic Alliance rules about psy-users, and allow them to monitor any factions of psy-users that may arise in the FTA. Infact, the FTA is widely against psy-users, and almost all psy-users are sent to either the jedi or the sith for training. They also respect the Galactic Alliance rule that says that it is illegal to disturb species that are yet to develop space travel, and as such, they do not claim new planets if these are inhabited. Very few systems and planets within the FTA still have slavery (and those that do have specific reasons for it, an example would be a religion in a specific system, where the spiritual leaders have slaves to work for them, seeing as they must voulunteer to be slaves, it is accepted), but many systems still have noblity, class based society and royalty, all of which is clearly against Galactic Alliance rules. The Galactic Alliance is considered a bigger threat against the free will of the people of the FTA and their right to keep their cultures. Recent changes Recently, a powerful senator took charge of the FTA and turned it into a democratic trade republic in which his office held the highest authority. All the senators would then vote to elect a new leader every few years. This change was made based on the fact that the FTA could in no way compete with the Galactic Alliance, nor the Sith Empire, and if they did not find a way to govern themselves without turing into a magocracy, it would be a matter of time before they were swept up those ever growing factions. As war is brewing between the Galactic Alliance and the Sith Empire, the FTA do their best to remain neutral, but individual planets and systems are constantly the happenings of space battles, and they cannot afford to deny either parties the right to travel through their space. Until the war between the Sith Empire and the Galactic Alliance seizes, it has been decided to keep the same Senator in office as leader. His name is Ulif Hatia, and he is a human nobleman from one of the systems, and also the leader of his own system, which is the UHA (Unified Human Alliance - consisting of all human systems and planets in the FTA, which again makes up the bigger part of the FTA, the UHA was created a few decades back, through diplomacy and internal struggle in the FTA). History Originally, the Galactic Alliance simply claimed everyone they deemed worthy, but as more and more colonies were stablished and grew into civilized planets, eventually, some systems grew powerful enough that the people there wanted their freedom. A civil war lead to a vote in the Galactic Alliance. The Creep Wars were raging on at the time, and the Galactic Alliance could not afford war on such scale on two fronts, and they cut the FTA loose, and they have been independant since, with a few more systems joining them from time to time, though these systems are rarely elopers from the Galactic Alliance, but rather newly discovered systems. When the allied forces that stood for independence on one side of the civil war were cut loose, it resulted in various governments who had been completely neutral and standing outside the Galactic Alliance since their discovery (but having had to allow the Galactic Alliance laws in their territories), banded and formed the FTA as it stood back then, only as a trade alliance and military alliance against any other faction in the galaxy. This resulted in the great Psy-purge, where most planets in the FTA hunted down the Jedi and other psy-users, murdering them. This happened almost a decade after the FTA coming into official existence, where the Jedi had managed to co-exist with the new independant governments peacefully, and actually, it appears that widespread propaganda started the outrage against the Jedi order and other psy-users. The Galactic Alliance and Sith republic (as it was called back then) united for the one purpose of putting an end to that, demanding that this stopped. Being threatened with full scale war and occupation, the FTA had to establish some official form of governement, effectively becoming a republic from that day forward, without ever wanting to take the name republic. It was decided to end the Jedi purges. All jedi were asked to return to the Galactic Alliance and psy-users were outlawed and upon discovery would be sold to the higher bidder amongst the ambassadors from the Galactic Alliance and Sith Empire (who came into an agreement about splitting them 25/75 in favour of the galactic alliance). All remaining Jedi Enclaves were sealed off and put under 24/7 survailance. They are slowly being opened only for Galactic Alliance officials who come there to retrieve dangerous and valuable objects. The enclaves that were already destroyed were made illegal to loot and pillage without a collectors permit. Many jedi refused to leave and went into hiding. Many jedi had no choice, as they had bounties on them set by powerful crime lords who wanted them dead, and they realized they would never be able to show their face in public, now that the crime lords lived where the authorities gave nothing for dead jedi. Further more, lightsabers are illegal and other jedi artifacts as well. They may only be owned with a valid collectors permit.